Leaked slide shows next generation chipsets with more PCIe lanes

It's been several years since we've seen a meaningful upgrade to PCI Express in Intel's chipsets. For the most part, budget on up to high-end motherboards have been limited to eight lanes at Gen2 speeds, though it appears that's going to change once Skylake arrives. A leaked slide posted to a Chinese-language website indicates that Intel's forthcoming 100 Series chipset for Skylake will ditch PCIe's eight Gen2 lanes for up to 20 lanes running at Gen3 speeds.

Save $100 on a Surface Pro 3 for a limited time

If you've been on the fence about purchasing a Surface Pro 3 tablet, perhaps a price cut might help make up your mind, or so Microsoft hopes. From today until February 7 (Saturday), U.S. customers can grab a Surface Pro 3 tablet from the Microsoft Store (online or retail) for $100 off MSRP. In addition, Microsoft is throwing in a protective sleeve valued at $40 at no extra cost -- you can choose from a dozen different styles.

Faster components get baked into Raspberry Pi 2 for the same price

Sequels are rarely as good as or better than the original, though that isn't the case with the Raspberry Pi 2, a faster version of the original with the same tantalizing $35 price tag. This time around, it's been upgraded with a 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU (Broadcom BCM2836 SoC) offering roughly six times better performance compared to the 700MHz ARM11 part (Broadcom BCM2835 SoC) found in the Raspberry Pi Model B+.

A graphics card build for overclocking

Renowned overclocker K|NGP|N (or Kingpin, from here on out) has endorsed EVGA's latest GeForce GTX 980 graphics card, which has been "meticulously designed for the extreme overclocker." More than just lip service, this card packs a 14+3 power phase design, a new digitally controlled VRM capable of delivering up to a whopping 600A of current, and three power inputs (two 8-pin and a single 6-pin).

Did anybody not see this coming?

What do you do when you see your enemy twisting in the wind? You strike, of course, and that's exactly what AMD predictably decided to do as rival Nvidia goes into damage control concerning the memory controversy on its GeForce GTX 970 graphics card. AMD and its partners have lowered the price of their Radeon R9 290X graphics cards to as low as $280 after rebate, or $300 without.

More than just a big frame buffer

Sapphire was the first company to release an 8GB version of AMD's Radeon R9 290X graphics card, though it's no longer the only one -- a handful of other graphics card players jumped on board after AMD gave them a reference design to play with. Be that as it may, Sapphire is intent on standing out from the crowd, so it went and retooled its 8GB R9 290X with a triple fan cooler and some other changes.

A dozen APUs are planned for this summer

A Chinese-language website has posted what it claims is a legitimate roadmap of AMD's forthcoming "Godavari" APUs. You can think of Godavari as a Kaveri refresh, as the new parts will feature the same Steamroller architecture for both the CPU and GPU portions. If the leaked roadmap proves accurate, AMD is planning to release a dozen Godavari APUs this summer, culminating in the A10-8850K.

Join the mile high VR club

Imagine that you're 40,000 feet above the ground, but instead of peering out a small oval window and looking at clouds (or darkness), you turn your head and see a dingo wandering about. Don't worry, it's not on the plane's wing feasting on wires and electronics, he's in your Gear VR headset. This is what Australian airline Qantas is working towards. Along with Samsung, Qantas has launched a new trial entertainment service that gives fliers a Gear VR headset during their flight.

Upcoming driver could improve GTX 970's memory performance

Nvidia really stepped in a pile of PR poo when it was discovered that there was an internal communication gaffe over the way the GeForce GTX 970 handles its 4GB of onboard memory and the resulting specs. In short, the GTX 970 has 56 ROPs and 1,792KB of L2 cache instead of matching the GTX 980's 64 ROPs and 2,048KB of L2 cache as originally advertised. However, Nvidia wants to make things right and has offered to help GTX 970 owners obtain a refund, if need be. Should you go that route?

Windows RT becomes a footnote

Looking back through the years, it's pretty easy to pick out certain forgettable versions of Windows. You know the ones -- Windows ME, Windows Vista (before the first Service Pack), and now Windows RT, the most recent of the bunch. Microsoft has reportedly stopped producing Surface 2 tablets, which also means that the future of Windows RT is nonexistent at this point. You'll have to excuse us for not weeping.